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Google Funds A Team Of Robot Journalists (theguardian.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the I,-Journalist dept.

Darren Sharp brings news about the arrival of robot journalists. The Guardian reports: Robots will help a national news agency to create up to 30,000 local news stories a month, with the help of human journalists and funded by a Google grant. The Press Association has won a €706,000 ($800,779 or £621,000) grant to run a news service with computers writing localised news stories. The national news agency, which supplies copy to news outlets in the U.K. and Ireland, has teamed up with data-driven news start-up Urbs Media for the project, which aims to create "a stream of compelling local stories for hundreds of media outlets"... PA's editor-in-chief, Peter Clifton, said journalists will still be involved in spotting and creating stories and will use artificial intelligence to increase the amount of content. He said: "Skilled human journalists will still be vital in the process, but Radar [the Reporters And Data And Robots project] allows us to harness artificial intelligence to scale up to a volume of local stories that would be impossible to provide manually." Journalists will create "detailed story templates" for articles about crime, health, and employment, for example, then use natural language software to create multiple versions to "scale up the mass localization."

15 of 43 comments (clear)

  1. Dupe by Aighearach · · Score: 1

    They already have this, I know because I read Google News.

    1. Re: Dupe by dougdonovan · · Score: 1

      cool, no more benefits needed for humans.

    2. Re: Dupe by Aighearach · · Score: 1

      If you really value benefits that much, we can always build a robot that can enjoy benefits. Problem solved!

  2. The news lost me when it got bought out by rsilvergun · · Score: 1

    by mega corps. There's no useful muck racking and nothing that anybody in the working class would be interested in. The only thing left is comics from the 70s and sports stats. And I can get those on my phone. Still, I suppose if you automate it then it costs so little to produce you can make some money off ad revenue from folks in their 50s. I'll go back to the BBC, Al Jazeerez and some of the youtube channels out there that report on the last round of leaked documents and the evil things my senator's are up to.

    --
    Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
  3. Inflation and deflation by petes_PoV · · Score: 2

    journalists will still be involved in spotting and creating stories and will use artificial intelligence to increase the amount of content.

    And then users will employ another AI to filter out the dross and compress these stories back down to just the salient facts.

    --
    politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
    1. Re:Inflation and deflation by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 1

      The amount of content seems to refer to many diverse stories, not depth in any story or with fluff.

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
  4. I want to read less by wakeboarder · · Score: 1

    Guess I'll stick with twitter, the bots are only going to rehash social feeds anyway. I refuse to read regurgitated news for the similar reasons I refuse to eat sewage burgers.

    1. Re:I want to read less by wakeboarder · · Score: 1

      The masses can't tell the difference however

  5. So they have bots to copy real news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The thing is the source of the news is actual real news outlets on line I am guessing and the bots just copy it. Lets face it the only way the bots can know what is news is by copying it. Surly this has to be immoral if not illegal.

    I imagine From google press to the local news source: We just stole your news your readers and you owe us for advertising posted on the news we stole and republished under our own brand.

    When they put the local news outlets (who are paying the reporters) out of business we get news taken off facebook and twitter I guess, with the disclaiming. "Some or all of the local news may not be local due to localisation errors or relevant or factual or news."

  6. No Copyright by Kestrell69 · · Score: 1

    The good news is that in the US any article created entirely by AI will be copyright free. Copyright law is quite explicit that only humans can own a copyright, not a machine or non-human.

  7. Re:And Each of Them More Qualified... by Mashiki · · Score: 1

    Human? The journalists at CNN already seem like they've been programmed by the DNC.

    Oh come on now. Just because one of their employees leaked debate questions to Hillary Clinton doesn't mean anything, it was just a buffer overflow error.

    --
    Om, nomnomnom...
  8. Donald Trump by argee · · Score: 1

    This is all a #FakeNews method of flooding the internet with anti-Trump stuff. Bet you CNN has a stake in this method!

    1. Re:Donald Trump by coinreturn · · Score: 1

      This is all a #FakeNews method of flooding the internet with anti-Trump stuff. Bet you CNN has a stake in this method!

      Because anything that paints Trump in less than a glittery glow is fake news in the eyes of the Trump fan.

  9. Re: 'AI', LOL by JonnyCalcutta · · Score: 1

    No. An android is a robot that looks human. A robot is a machine that carries out physical tasks, but doesn't have to look human at all. It might be AI, in the loosest sense of the word, but who knows.

  10. Re:Customized news by Rockoon · · Score: 1

    For instance,

    The Democrats get the headline "Trump Can't Find a Hotel Room at G20"
    The Republicans get the headline "Trump Still Working to Get Mexico to Pay For Wall at G20"

    and the sane people get "Trump, Russia, and Syria Agree to Ceasefire at G20"

    If your "media" was championing either of the first two in light of the last one, YOU ARE LIVING IN A FAKE NEWS BUBBLE YOU DUMB FUCK.

    --
    "His name was James Damore."